New Delhi, Oct 13 (TIWN) A trained engineer who went to IIM Calcutta, and after a decade long corporate career decided to pause and gift herself some "me time", not to mention a Creative Writing course in the US later -- author Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, whose latest "Girls and the City", published by HarperCollins India recently hit the stands, has vivid memories of that break during which she wrote her first book.

 "My husband and I were in Singapore that time, and I couldn't help but think of my home in Ferozepur. Memories flooded back in. To make sense of them, I started asking questions. My research took me back in time and it was the national library, not any salon, that became my haunt. Seven years later, I had a book, my first: 'The Long Walk Home'," says the author who now has six books to her credit, including the Mehrunisa series and "The Radiance of a Thousand Suns".  Talking about her latest, "Girls and the City", set in Bengaluru, which is tale of female friendships centered on a murder mystery, a whodunit, that is more of a who-was-it-done-to, Someshwar reveals that she started writing it amid the #metoo movement, wanting to explore the dynamics between sex and power.  "We are somehow still reluctant to discuss sexual assault and harassment. I saw the book as a way to reignite that conversation. It explores how women navigate everyday misogyny using wit, grit and tenacity."  Adding that women's concerns are different from those of their male counterparts, she says, "Men write about themselves whilst women write the world."